


Jeffrey Nullier's "Man With Fedora"

by copperbadge



Category: White Collar
Genre: Con Artists, Crimes & Criminals, Forgery, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Secret Identity, Vandalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-20
Updated: 2010-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A routine investigation into an art theft turns up Neal's fingerprints on a stolen painting. Neal swears he's never stolen a Nullier painting, but that's only half the truth...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who Framed Neal Caffrey?

**Author's Note:**

> Betas thanks to Spider, Anya, Dove, and tzikeh. 
> 
> This is now **[a podfic](http://koishii.net/temple/2011/116)**! It's also been translated **[into Russian,](http://www.diary.ru/~whitecollar/p163142857.htm?oam#more1)** which inspired some **[lovely art.](http://www.diary.ru/~whitecollar/p171694330.htm?oam#more1)** Also, the wonderful Cephei has done a rendition of Field #2, **[linked here.](http://cephei.dreamwidth.org/3295.html)**

"Art heist," Peter announced that morning in the conference room, and the entire team turned to look at Neal.

"Hey, what, I didn't do it," Neal said, holding up his hands. "Innocent, innocent."

"How do you know?" Jones asked.

"I've never stolen any art," Neal replied calmly, but he shot a grin at Peter, who sighed.

"Neal's not our guy," Peter said, passing a stack of folders to Diana. She took one and passed it on.

"Of course I'm -- how do you know?" Neal turned to Peter, intrigued more than anything.

"Checked your tracker," Peter said with a grin. Neal groaned and leaned back in the chair as Jones tossed a folder on his lap. "Hey, you should be happy, that thing's an ironclad alibi."

"In English, an invasion of privacy," Neal replied.

"Says the man who used to break into peoples' homes for fun. Don't dish it out if you can't take it," Peter said, which neatly shut Neal up. "Meanwhile, back at the FBI, we have an art heist."

"Huh," Diana said, studying the case file. "A Degas, two minor Picassos, and three by someone named Jeffrey Nullier."

"Nullier?" Neal asked, opening his own copy of the file. "Really."

"Now you're interested," Peter observed. "So, smash and grab in the upper West Side. NYPD's already pulled the forensics but there's not much to go on. They're passing it off to us because one of the Nullier paintings turned up out of state. Its new owner in Boston says he bought in New York, so we're looking for a fence hawking Degas, Picasso, or Nullier."

"Interesting trio," Neal said. "I'd like to meet the original collector."

"Which is good, because that's where we're headed," Peter said. "Diana, I want you and Jones talking to local galleries. See if anyone's been asking about our artists. Shake down a couple of fences."

"I can ask around," Neal offered.

"First things first, let's talk to the owner. Make sure this isn't an insurance fraud," Peter said.

"We're on the case," Neal said with a grin, flipping his hat onto his head.

***

The collector, Richard Trumbull, was a middle-aged stockbroker, an early retiree who'd made his money in the dot-com boom. When Peter and Neal walked into his living room, he greeted them with a spark of enthusiasm that quickly dropped into something approaching confusion. Peter wrote it off as the usual reaction to an FBI agent dragging a consultant along, and asked to be shown the gallery.

"I have two," Trumbull explained, leading them through the spacious, tidily kept house. "The sculpture gallery facing north and the painting gallery leading to it. The light in the painting gallery in the evenings is superb."

"None of the sculptures were targeted?" Peter asked.

"Too heavy for smash and grab," Neal put in.

"That would seem to be a factor," Trumbull said. "The Picassos were both small studies, and the Degas was cut out of its frame. Two of the Nullier paintings were new works, not yet framed."

"But they were insured," Peter said.

"Oh yes. For considerably less than the Picassos and the Degas, but Nullier's work has risen sharply in value over the past five years."

"He disappeared, didn't he?" Neal asked.

"For nearly five years, yes. He's only just begun selling again. As a rule I don't collect living artists, but Nullier has a certain appeal I find irresistible," Trumbull said, giving Peter another slightly confused look. Peter glanced at Neal and saw an odd grin on his face. He looked like he wanted to ask another question but was restraining himself. Peter wondered if Neal had ever forged a Nullier. Forging living artists was unusual, but then so was Neal.

"Here we are," Trumbull added sadly, gesturing at a bare wall with a couple of hooks at eye-level. "My ravished gallery."

"Neal?" Peter said.

"I'm going to prowl," Neal told him. "Check out approaches. They broke this window?" he asked, pointing to a window at the far end.

"Yes," Trumbull said. Neal hurried off to investigate it, while Peter stood and studied the hooks as if they'd provide inspiration.

"Was there anything particularly special about these six paintings?" he asked. "Were they linked in any way?"

"Not that I can think of -- well, Nullier is heavily influenced by Degas. That's why we put them near each other. There were certain color echoes between the Picassos and the Degas, but they weren't purchased from the same dealers or auctions. They weren't even insured by the same company."

"Why Nullier?" Neal called, leaning out the open window, looking down at the lawn a few feet below.

"Sorry?" Trumbull asked. Neal leaned back in.

"Well, he's easier to sell, but he's less valuable. Why take Degas and Picasso -- tough to fence -- and then Nullier?"

"Startup capital," Peter said. "Fence the Nullier paintings, live on that till the heat dies down, then try putting out feelers for the more valuable paintings."

"Which explains why the Nullier turned up first," Neal agreed, thoughtfully. "Diana and Jones should focus on people hawking Nullier. We should contact other collectors who own him, too."

"Get a list, start making calls," Peter said, but Neal was already on the phone. "Mr. Trumbull, do you have photographs of the paintings?"

"Of course, the insurance files will," Trumbull said. He gave Peter a last peculiar look before hurrying off to find the files. Peter took out his phone and called Diana.

"Boss," Diana said, when she answered. "Good timing. I think you better get down here."

"What's going on?" Peter asked.

"Jones found an auction house with two Nullier paintings for sale. Neither of them are the ones we're after, but both paintings are confirmed to already be in private ownership. The ones at the auction house are probably fake."

"Forgeries now?" Peter asked. "What the hell is going on? Who is this Nullier guy?"

"Good question. He's a recluse, maybe some kind of performance artist. His paintings are dropped off at gallery loading docks and the money goes into Swiss bank accounts. We're trying to get information out of the Swiss about who may have accessed them -- "

"Good luck," Peter sighed.

"I know. I want to have Neal take a look at the forgeries, confirm they're fakes and the real ones are still hanging where they belong."

Peter glanced at Neal, who was going over the photographs with Trumbull. "We're on our way."

***

"Forging Nullier," Neal said, almost admiringly, his nose two inches from the painting on the display easel. It was one of a pair of night scenes; shadowy hints at houses and trees in the foreground, red-gold sunsets in the background, the whole thing Impressionist-blurry. "That's ballsy. They did a good job, but these are definitely fakes."

"How can you tell?" Jones asked. Neal was silent. "Caffrey?"

"You know...brushstrokes, shadowing, hesitation marks," Neal said vaguely.

"Neal," Peter prompted, because he knew Neal's _I'm hiding something from you for your own good_ voice.

"I swear to you, Peter, I've never forged a Nullier," Neal said, not looking away from the painting. "The person selling these, can we get in touch with them?"

"The auction house bought them," the attendant said, looking embarrassed. "It was transacted almost entirely online."

"Smart kid," Neal said softly. "Did they sell you anything else?"

"Just the Nullier paintings."

Neal straightened and turned to Peter.

"Someone's going after Nullier," he said.

"New theory," Peter said thoughtfully. "The Degas and Picassos?"

"Smokescreen. Extra bonus, maybe. But then..." Neal frowned. "Why sell a painting if you're going after paintings for a collection?"

"We'll figure that out. Okay," Peter said, handing the attendant a business card. "Get in touch with my office about the investigation. We'll keep you up to date. In the meantime, file a claim with your insurance."

The attendant nodded and looked sadly at the card. "We were so excited to have them," she said.

"Well, at least he's alive," Neal told her. "You never know. You might get some more, sometime."

***

Back at the Bureau, Neal excused himself to his desk to make calls, and Peter met with Diana and Jones in his office.

"So we're investigating theft, forgery, and possibly some form of very obscure stalking," he said, paging through the file. "What do we know about Nullier?"

"Jeffrey Nullier," Diana told him, passing him a printout. "Not much. He's shy."

"Shy is an understatement," Jones said. "Never gives interviews, never been seen. Just drops off the paintings and leaves."

"His first work was exhibited and sold at the Monmount Gallery in El Paso," Diana continued. "The McNay Museum in San Antonio has two of his works. The rest are presumably in private hands."

"Presumably?" Peter asked.

"He doesn't go through an agent. His work's popular but hard to track. We don't know what galleries have had them, so it's difficult to say who they sold them to," Diana said. She spread out a series of photographs: Trumbull's two new portraits and a landscape he'd bought years ago. "Almost five years ago, Nullier dropped out of view completely; as far as we know he didn't sell anything or produce any new work. In the last six months he's done three canvases. Trumbull had two," she said, setting out another landscape. "This one's on the wall at the Met."

"They snapped that up," Peter said, studying the portraits that had been stolen from Trumbull. One was a young redheaded woman, set against smooth, swirling green; the other was a man with a fedora tipped down over his eyes, smiling enigmatically.

"It's a loan from a private collector," Diana said. "We're working on getting the name now."

Peter paused, looking over her shoulder at where Neal was talking on the phone, grinning wide, laughing occasionally.

"If nobody knows where they were sold, or who they were sold to," he said, "then who is Neal calling?"

"He's looking into who owns the paintings?" Jones asked, not turning around.

"You think he's in on this somehow?" Diana added.

"Could just be he has connections, but I think there's something deeper here," Peter said. Neal hung up and almost ran across the room and up the stairs, arriving in the doorway with a legal pad covered in handwriting.

"I got fifteen Nulliers accounted for," he said, beaming. "I told the owners to watch their security. The McNay's taking theirs down and storing them in their secure archives. There's an auction house in Jersey that says they've already had calls about the one they have. It's skyrocketing in value, they'll keep it safe."

"Neal," Peter said, calmly, "how many paintings did Nullier do?"

"Including the three this year? Twenty-five," Neal said.

"How do you know?" Peter asked.

"It's just a thing you know," Neal replied easily. "So that's fifteen accounted for, two in storage at the McNay, the one at the Met, the one at the auction house, the three stolen from Trumbull, leaves three in the wind. Want me to chase them?"

"I'm shocked you haven't already caught them," Peter drawled. Neal frowned.

"What'd I do?" he asked.

"Nothing," Peter said, shaking his head. "Okay. Let's work on the assumption that someone's trying to draw Nullier out. You're them. What's your next move?"

"The Met," Neal said promptly. "Their gallery security's terrible -- not that I've been looking into it," he added hastily. "If I were trying to piss off an artist I'd steal the one that's the most well-known. Gotta be the one at the Met."

"Stakeout?" Diana asked.

"Not the van," Neal moaned.

"Stakeout," Peter said.

"Please, please don't make me," Neal said.

"He whines," Jones put in.

"See? Jones says I whine. You haven't even heard whining," Neal added.

"It's like being a kindergarten teacher," Peter sighed. "Fine. Diana, Jones, stake out the Met. Find out who owns that damn painting. Neal, go home and think about what a good person I am for not making you sit in the van tonight."

"Already done," Neal said with a grin.

Peter watched him go, speculatively.

"Jones?" he said.

"Tail Caffrey?"

"You read my mind."

***

Neal didn't go anywhere that night -- Jones kept a close watch, and the tracking data proved it. In the morning, the painting at the Met was still right where it was supposed to be.

Unfortunately, Neal wasn't, exactly.

Peter got the call at six a.m., fumbling for the phone by his bedside. "What?" he asked, when he finally managed to pick up.

"Neal's being arrested," Jones said.

"Again?" Peter groaned. "What did he do now?"

"Forensics just got done with the recovered Nullier painting. They found his fingerprints on it," Jones said.

"Neal," Peter sighed. "Okay, is it NYPD or the Marshals?"

"NYPD."

"Stall them. Flash your badge, do a little chest-pounding. Tell them Neal's not going anywhere until his custodial agent has had a chance to examine the evidence. June's?"

"June's," Jones confirmed, and Peter heard Neal in the background yell, "Is that Peter? Tell him this isn't what it looks like!"

***

"This isn't what it looks like," Neal blurted, when Peter arrived in his dining room. Peter glanced around. There were half a dozen uniform cops and two detectives standing by.

"It looks like you being arrested for grand theft," he said. "Guys, I need a word in private."

Neal, a little wild-eyed, let himself be drawn out onto the terrace, where Peter pushed him down into a chair.

"Did you steal, or arrange to have stolen, the Nullier paintings?" he demanded.

"No," Neal said emphatically.

"Did you forge any?"

"I've never forged a Nullier," Neal protested.

"Can you explain how your fingerprints got on one of the stolen paintings?" Peter asked.

Neal stared at him. "Is that why they put me in cuffs?"

"NYPD's forensic lab found your prints on the recovered painting," Peter said. Neal kept staring and then burst out laughing. "Neal, this isn't a joke!"

"Oh, my god, I know, but it's funny," Neal said, around snorts of laughter. "This is funny and I am so screwed."

"What did you do, Neal?" Peter demanded.

Neal shook his head, grinning. "A long con just bit me on the ass, Peter. I didn't steal the Nullier paintings. I painted them."

"You said you didn't forge -- "

"I didn't! They're mine. Jeffrey Nullier is an alias," Neal told him.

Peter felt his brain whirr to a sharp halt. This invalidated everything, and he hated how Neal could just do that -- say something, do something that changed all the rules of the game in an instant. Basic assumptions no longer seemed basic. Everything had to be rewritten.

Neal gave him a nervous look.

"Look, they're just bullshit paintings I did when I got bored," he added.

Peter ran through his list of default things he could say to Neal when situations like this arose, and found an appropriate one.

"If you're lying to me -- " he started, and Neal shook his head.

"I'm not, I swear I'm not. My prints are on the painting because I painted it. That's how I knew the two at the auction house were forgeries. It's how I knew who owned the paintings. I keep track."

"You're Jeffrey Nullier."

Neal beamed. "In the flesh."

Peter hesitated again, and then gave in to impulse and demanded, "What the hell kind of stupid con is that?"

"Look, I sold two paintings from a gallery in El Paso. They sold well, so I did a few more when I had the spare time. Things just kind of...got out of hand. When I got bored I'd do a Nullier, toss it to some gallery, tell them to sell it and transfer the money to my account. I can't touch the Swiss account because Mozzie locked it down when I was arrested..." Neal waggled his ankle with the tracker on it, "...and I can't exactly go visit, can I? So the money's just there. A nest egg. Safety net. Whatever, the money doesn't matter. It's all about the con, Peter. Selling my own work. The Mysterious Jeffrey Nullier."

"I cannot believe you," Peter said.

"I can prove it," Neal said.

"How?" Peter asked.

"I signed them with my own name," Neal told him. "Get the cuffs off and I'll show you."

***

Peter didn't take the cuffs off until they were in the curator's office at the Met, with the Met's loaned Nullier painting in front of them. Objectively, it was a pretty good painting of a winter scene, with a bonfire burning in one corner and smoke rising up against a dark sky.

"So, who owns this?" Peter asked as he unlocked the cuffs.

"June," Neal replied. "I gave it to her. I told her I knew Nullier. I think she suspects it was me."

"June's not an idiot, so probably," Peter agreed. He glanced at the curator for confirmation of ownership, and she gave him a small nod. Neal rubbed his wrists and then picked up the painting by its frame, leaning it against a window. He studied it from the side and top, adjusting it slightly.

"Every Nullier has his name in the corner," he said, pointing to the lower-right-hand corner where _J. Nullier_ was visible. "But I put my name in all of them too."

"Safeguard?" Peter asked.

"Vanity," Neal replied. He pulled Peter over to stand with a shoulder against the wall, looking sidelong at the painting. "You can't see it unless you turn the painting almost oblique and get some good downward light going..."

Peter squinted at the painting. At this angle nothing made sense in perspective, but the tendrils of rising smoke from the bonfire seemed to sprawl out across the whole painting...

Forming the words "Neal Caffrey".

"Pretty cool, huh?" Neal said, leaning cockily against the wall on the other side of the painting.

"Well, it clears up a few things," Peter replied. "But it doesn't help us catch our bad guy."

"That depends on your point of view," Neal said. Peter waited for him to continue. "The goal is to lure Nullier out of hiding, right? We think? So if Nullier had, say, a retrospective at the Met, where he planned to unveil his latest work..."

"That'd draw the thieves," Diana finished. "How do we catch them?"

"Bait," Neal said. "We make one of the paintings attractive and stealable. Look, I can set this up, I know where the paintings are. I can weasel them out of the owners for a show."

"That's putting a lot of, and it pains me deeply to say this, valuable art, in peril," Peter said. "Which one do we put up as bait?"

"I'm the artist," Neal said, as if Peter were being a little slow. "I can paint you one."

***

When they were in the car again, on the way to the office, Neal glanced at Peter carefully.

"Nothing about this is illegal," he pointed out. "It's not illegal to sign a fake name to a painting unless the painting's a forgery. Mine are originals, sold by legitimate galleries, taxes paid and everything."

"You've done twenty-five original paintings in the last, what, ten years?" Peter asked.

"More like twelve. Really more like eight years, before I was arrested," Neal said.

"You started when you were _seventeen?_ "

Neal hedged. "A lot of great painters started young."

"A lot of great painters weren't recognized in their own lifetime," Peter shot back.

"So you're agreeing I'm a great painter?"

"So you're agreeing I have good taste in art?"

"You don't like anything painted after the eighteenth century," Neal complained. "You think pop art is a con game. You called Haustenberg cartooney."

"Pop art _is_ a con game. The only difference is I can't arrest anyone for committing it," Peter said. He glanced at Neal. "So. Are you going to come out?"

"What?" Neal asked, turning to him.

"Come out. Are you going to take credit for the paintings?"

"Why?" Neal asked. "I've already been paid for them."

"Reputation. Fame. Both things you're very fond of," Peter pointed out.

"Yeah, I really want the whole New York art scene to know that Jeffrey Nullier is a convicted felon working for the FBI," Neal said. "Pass. What makes you think I'm so interested in fame?"

"Come on, Neal. You like attention. You live for attention. When I was chasing you, you did everything short of turning yourself in to get attention."

"Attention from you," Neal said. "Yeah, I like it when people notice me. I don't like it when people can't help noticing me. There's an art to blending in, Peter, and part of that is not, you know, being a famous artist."

Peter made a wry face, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Seventy grand. That early Nullier they stole from Trumbull is worth seventy grand. How much did you make off the other two?"

"I don't know," Neal said, and Peter cast a stern look his way. "I don't. I left them at the gallery with my routing number, I didn't look up what they sold for. If it's in the file, deduct forty percent for gallery fees and handling, and that's my cut. I told you, it's not about the money."

"What's it about? Don't say the con, don't say boredom, don't waste my time," Peter said. Neal closed his mouth, considered it, then spoke.

"Once in a while I...find something I want to paint. I'm a forger, I'm not an artist, but I see something that strikes me. I paint it, it's over, and I can sell the painting. That's all," he said. "It's a purge."

"You are such a tortured genius," Peter told him.

"You injure my soul," Neal replied, and then laughed. "Come on, Peter, this is a little funny."

"It'll be a little funny once we catch whoever's stealing and forging your work," Peter said. "Right now it's a case. You're going to go to your desk, start setting up the fake retrospective, and when you're done I'm taking you home to paint a Nullier."

"I need to stop at the art store first."

***

"I don't understand why you're still here," Neal said, four hours later, standing in front of his easel with his arms crossed. Peter was setting out takeaway containers on his table.

"I want to see you work," Peter said, opening one container and fishing out a piece of chicken, popping it in his mouth. "I can go over files here as easily as I can at home, and Elizabeth's not at home tonight anyway."

"You want to see me work," Neal repeated flatly.

"Everything you do fascinates me," Peter informed him, faux-somber. "I have made you my life's work. Years of study -- "

"Fine, fine, Diderot, I get it," Neal said, sorting his brushes and rummaging in a box for paints, unpacking the ones he'd picked up at the art store. He'd changed into a pair of track pants and a t-shirt, and he looked like he was stalling.

"Self-conscious, Caffrey?" Peter asked, spooning fried rice out onto a plate.

"Just deciding what to paint," Neal replied, accepting the challenge. "My work has been described as _a love letter to the eerie_ ," he said, fingering a piece of charcoal in his right hand. "You know Ilya Repin?"

Peter grinned over his food. "He painted _Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan_."

"He was a master of understatement," Neal said, beginning to sketch lightly on the canvas. "Ever seen it?"

"I've seen pictures," Peter said.

"Ivan Vasilyevich," Neal said thoughtfully, arm still moving as he sketched. "The first Tsar of Russia, cradling his dead son."

"Yeah, the son he murdered," Peter added.

"Do you know what happened to it?"

Peter leaned back. "Some. Abram Balashev was so unbalanced by the painting that he tried to destroy it. He slashed the faces a few times before they got to him."

"Abram Balashev was unbalanced by mental illness," Neal corrected. "But he did pick an especially gruesome painting to focus his delusions on. There are persistent rumors that people have killed themselves after seeing it."

"You can't forge _Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan_ ," Peter said.

"Well, I can. I'm just not allowed to," Neal grinned at him over his shoulder. A form was appearing on the canvas, a head with the center line canted slightly to the right. "But imagine having that kind of power. Being able to paint something that drove people insane." He stepped back and tossed the charcoal up and down in his hand, thinking. "Imagine if you could paint something that would reach right down into the hindbrain and trigger a reaction."

"Is that what you're going for?" Peter asked.

"Maybe I just want to scare the crap out of whoever's gunning for me," Neal replied, and then set his charcoal down. He picked up a tray and began mixing paints; Peter took one of the files he'd brought with him out of the box and tried not to get fried rice on it while he reviewed it.

He looked up every once in a while to check on Neal's progress; the head was definitely taking form, a masculine face with a lantern jaw on a light blue background. At one point Neal stepped back to study it, and Peter caught a glimpse of one staring blue eye. He looked away hurriedly, glad that for the most part Neal's body blocked the image.

He was in the middle of reviewing a cold case when Neal thumped down in the chair next to him, pulled one of the cartons of food towards him, and started eating.

"So?" he asked, gesturing over his shoulder at the painting.

"You work fast," Peter said, reluctant to look up.

"Sometimes I have to. Had to," Neal corrected. "Allegedly. Check it out, Diderot, I want your thoughts."

Peter dragged his eyes up to the painting reluctantly --

And found himself looking into the stern, furious face of Neal Caffrey.

"Jesus," he said, startled. "That's creepy as hell, Neal."

"Is it?" Neal asked, pleased, and turned back to look at it. "I'm not objective about my own face. How are the eyes?"

The eyes were a starker blue than the background, luminous with controlled anger. Peter glanced from the painting to Neal's face and back, wondering if he had, for nine years, drastically underestimated how dangerous Neal could be.

"They work," Peter said, turning away from the painting's glare. "I thought you'd already done a self-portrait, though."

Neal frowned, puzzled. "No. What made you think that?"

Peter reached for the Trumbull investigation file, pulling out one of the photographs. "This one. Isn't that you?" he asked, tapping _Man With Fedora_.

Neal looked at it and laughed. "That's not me. I don't wear brims that wide. Kills my cheekbones."

"Oh, of course," Peter rolled his eyes. Neal cocked his head.

"Give me your certification," he said, holding out his hand.

"What?"

"Let me have your ID."

Peter frowned, digging his FBI wallet out of his pocket. He hesitated, and Neal raised an eyebrow.

"What am I going to do, convince you I'm Peter Burke?" he asked, taking it out of Peter's fingers. "Now, pay attention. Me," he said, gesturing to his face. "Painting," he continued, holding up the photo of _Man With Fedora_. "You," he finished, waving the ID.

Peter looked from Neal's face to the photograph, then down to his ID and back. The man's eyes and most of his nose were obscured by the hat, and his smile was curled up in a smug, almost menacing way, but the pull of skin across the cheek and the shape of the mouth were familiar. Very, very familiar.

"You painted me?" Peter asked. Neal set the photo down and offered him his wallet back. Peter ignored it, still staring. "You painted me in a painting?" he demanded, and then he blurted the first thing that came into his head: "I don't wear hats!"

Neal sighed. "That's why they call it artistic license."

"You painted me!"

"What? You should be flattered, your mouth's worth like ninety grand. Wait, not like that," Neal added hurriedly.

"You took my face!" Peter said, taking his wallet back.

"Borrowed, for a painting. Nobody knows it's -- "

"Trumbull does," Peter said, as information began to slot into place. "He kept looking at me weird. Neal, you stole my face."

"It's not like it's a nude or something," Neal said carefully. "Come on, Peter, how many people can say a portrait of them sold for major money in the art world? Nullier is famous. _Man With Fedora_ was his re-emergence after five years of silence."

"Fedora," Peter repeated, horrified realization dawning. " _Fed_ ora."

Neal couldn't quite contain the smile playing around his lips.

"You think you're pretty smart," Peter said. "You put a pun in a painting of me?"

" _Fedora_ ," Neal said, and started to laugh -- quietly, obviously trying not to and unable to avoid it. He kept struggling to keep a lid on it, and then he snorted and Peter lost it and put his head in his arms, laughing as well.

"I swear to god, I'm going to kill you as soon as this stops being funny," Peter gasped.

"I think I'm pretty safe then," Neal replied, snorting again. "I'm really sorry, Peter, I'm so -- ho -- " he didn't manage to get the word out a second time around the laughter. Peter wiped his eyes and sat back, staring at the photo.

"You got my chin wrong," he said finally, when Neal had subsided.

"I -- !" Neal looked outraged. "That chin is a work of art, don't tell me I got it wrong. The photo doesn't do the painting justice."

"Yeah, we'll see when we recover it," Peter said, tucking the photo away. "This doesn't get you off the hook for painting me without my permission."

"What are you going to do, arrest me for having good taste?" Neal asked.

"I'll think of something," Peter said darkly.

"Do I get points for telling you it's you?" Neal offered.

"Has that ever worked with me in the past?"

"No," Neal admitted.

Peter had almost forgotten the portrait in the room, Neal's face and the column of his throat and those furious ice-blue eyes, but Neal stood up and wandered back over to it, rubbing at a patch of paint on his hand as he studied it.

"It's going to be a quick and dirty varnish," Neal said, finally. "I have ten paintings coming in for the retrospective, plus the two forgeries we confiscated from the auction house, just to thicken the mix. Everything should be here by Thursday. If you give me Jones and a couple of the field guys I can have everything hung by Friday, and we'll do a preview on Friday night. Opening on Saturday. I gave them Elizabeth's card for the catering."

"Thanks. You think our thief will come to the preview?" Peter asked.

"I don't know. I can't think of any reason someone would be tracking me down. Why steal a painting if you're going to sell it? Why forge two paintings you didn't steal? I don't like being messed with." Neal stopped rubbing the paint on his hands. "Should I even ask why we're not putting me out there as bait, or just feel lucky?"

"Whoever's doing this, it's probably what they want," Peter said. "I don't like giving people what they want."

"When what they want is me," Neal said.

"That's part of it, but not all of it. We don't even need to use you, if we go that route, if this retrospective idea doesn't work. Nobody knows what Jeffrey Nullier looks like. We could put Jones up as Nullier. Hell, we could put Diana up as Nullier."

"She'd play me better," Neal said absently. "But I'll be at the showing, right? You're not going to make me sit in the van while people admire my work, are you?"

Peter sighed. "If you promise not to draw too much attention or stand too close to that," he said, pointing at the portrait, "you can go to the preview. And I," he added, "am going home. Try not to stay up too late basking in your fame, Nullier."

"Seeya tomorrow, Diderot," Neal replied.

***

Neal spent the next morning at his desk, distractedly waving Peter away every time he stopped to check in, apparently dealing with details of the retrospective. Peter privately thought it couldn't possibly be that complicated just to hang a bunch of pictures on a wall, but apparently there were mystic rituals artists had to go through to prep a show.

Jones had a report for him to read that morning, a listing of schools that taught art courses involving Jeffrey Nullier (Neal was going to need a whole new page for his scrapbook of morally ambiguous activity) and a couple of research pages about him that had turned up on Google. Someone in El Paso had done a graduate thesis on Nullier -- the date indicated it must have been written while Neal was serving his third year in supermax. He skimmed it, but art academia bored him. More interesting were the printouts from the McNay in San Antonio, little digital images of each painting and descriptions beneath. One of them was the first painting the El Paso gallery had received; the other was more recent, probably one of the last Neal had done before prison.

Jeffrey Nullier had bolted out of nowhere in the middle of West Texas in 1998, right around the time Peter was entering Quantico. His earlier work was described as _immature but promising_ , and was increasing in value not so much because it was any good but because it was the early work of Jeffrey Nullier.

Jones had managed to wrangle photographs of most of Neal's paintings out of the owners, working off the list Neal had made. There was one that had been left with a gallery in Los Angeles which Peter immediately identified as having been painted while Neal was on the Blevins scam. Peter was willing to bet if he cross-referenced his file on Neal with the other galleries that had received Nullier paintings he could match each painting to the con Neal had been running at the time.

None of them were violent or overtly frightening, but Peter decided whoever had described them as "love letters to the eerie" wasn't wrong. The later ones, especially, were...strange. Even _Man With Fedora_ 's smile was near to menacing. Peter had looked closely at the landscape from the Met and noticed the bonfire, idyllic on the surface, was shaped very much like a funeral pyre. Both had been painted during Neal's time with the Bureau, and there was probably some kind of hidden psychological message in that, but Peter really didn't have time for art-analysis bullcrap.

Just past eleven, Peter got a call from the Portland office at the same time Neal answered a call at his desk. Peter saw Neal stand up and gesture for him to come down, but the agent on the other end of his line was saying that a Nullier, the second half of a set of paintings, had been stolen from a private house in Portland. Peter shook his head at Neal and crooked his fingers. Neal looked down at his phone, said a few words, hung up, and was already redialing on his cell by the time he reached Peter's office.

"Portland," Neal mouthed, muttering reassurances into the phone.

"Me too," Peter replied, covering his receiver. "Investigating agent."

"Victim." Neal pointed at his phone, then answered, "No, ma'am, I think you must agree at this point it's safer to move the remaining Nullier painting to New York. The Met has excellent security."

"I don't think we need to confiscate the second painting," Peter said, following Neal's lead. "Tell you what, can you convince the owner to get it out of the house? I don't want a repeat break-in."

They talked over and around each other for another few minutes before Neal hung up. He listened as Peter made arrangements to have the necessary investigation documents sent over.

"It's getting shipped out today," Neal said. "The Met can take delivery and store it securely. It'll come in with the others."

"Another smash and grab," Peter replied. "He gets around, huh? Paperwork's on its way, including photographs."

"I know what they look like," Neal said. "Here's my question: why steal only one?"

"Didn't like the other one?" Peter asked. Neal shook his head.

"Field #1 and Field #2 were a matched set. They don't make sense without each other," he said.

"What do you mean, don't make sense?" Peter asked.

"They're not supposed to be separated. Anyone who knows my work would know that the Field paintings go together. If you split them up, their value drops. Intrinsically and monetarily. Unless he's just screwing with me, but that's a lot of risk to take to piss me off," Neal said. "He took _Field #2_ , right?"

"Describe them for me," Peter said. "How do they go together?"

Neal blew out a breath, rubbing a hand through his hair. " _Field #1_ was -- okay, laugh -- a field, in Oregon. We were down in the Willamette Valley, just outside Salem, really pretty. We had a place there for a few months. Kate and me," he added. "We were allegedly waiting on some supplies for something I can't talk about, so I painted. _Field #1_ is the field out behind the place we were staying, with a woman sitting in one corner of it. _Field #2_ is a close-up of her in the same place, a portrait."

"Kate," Peter said. Neal nodded. "You did a painting of Kate and just...sold it?"

"I sold a painting of you, remember?"

"I'm not your girlfriend," Peter pointed out.

"Thanks for reminding me," Neal drawled. "The painting isn't the point. The process is the point, the painting is just a byproduct most of the time. I asked Kate, she said sell them; by then we knew a Nullier would get at least twenty or thirty thousand. So I sold them and moved some cash around and we went to Seattle and I showed her a good time."

"You blew thirty grand in Seattle?" Peter asked, eyebrow raising.

"I blew ten grand in Seattle. I'm a sybarite, not a hedonist," Neal said.

"You ever think about buying the portrait back?" Peter asked.

"I didn't have someone steal _Field #2_ , Peter. I wouldn't break up the set."

Peter sighed. "Okay, I get it." He was silent for a moment. "Neal, you were making good money. As a legitimate artist. You could have -- "

"Come on, don't waste _my_ time," Neal said. "I told you. It's not about the money, it's never about the money. It was about the work. Now -- " he cut off sharply, and Peter fixed him with a curious stare.

"Now?" Peter prompted.

"Now it's about seeing if you're going to catch me again," Neal said, with an elegant shrug and a grin. "You always do."

"What happens the first time I don't?"

"I don't know," Neal answered, leaning forward. "Let me get away with something sometime, and we'll find out."

"Not gonna happen, Neal," Peter warned.

"See? That's the fun of it. Consequences are for lesser men, Peter. We just have the endless game," Neal said.

Peter tapped his pen against his desk, grinning. "Did you seriously think I would buy that? 'Consequences are for lesser men'? I bet honesty is a more challenging game, too."

"Can't blame a guy for trying," Neal replied, unrepentant. "Listen, if they hit Portland this morning they might try to hit the other collectors on the west coast. I'll make a few calls. If they do get through and grab another painting, I'll make sure they see an ad for the retrospective on the way out."

"Why are these people talking to you?" Peter asked. Neal turned and flicked a bit of white card through the air; it spun and landed neatly on Peter's desk.

"I'm Jeffrey's new agent," he said, as Peter studied the business card.

  
**Nick Halden**   
_Art Management & Consulting_   


***

Either the rest of the Nullier owners were tighter on security, or their thief had what they wanted. No more paintings went missing -- at least, not from their owners.

The photographs of the stolen paintings hung in the conference room: _Man With Fedora_ and the redhead, _Robbing Titian_ , at the top, separated a little from _Field #2_. The landscape they'd recovered was beneath those two, and the two forged landscapes beneath that. Neal did confirm that one of the three paintings he hadn't been able to locate had been stolen from a minor gallery in Tennessee, so it went up next to _Field #2_ : _Keystone_ , the only nude that Jeffrey Nullier had painted, a naked woman reaching for a book on the top shelf of a bookcase. She looked suspiciously like Alex, but Peter carefully didn't ask. Jones and Diana both liked that painting best.

Off to one side, as if they weren't even important, sat images of Trumbull's two Picassos and his Degas. At the moment they were simply involuntary casualties of the assault on Neal's body of work.

Thursday night, Peter came home with the Nullier file to find Elizabeth on the phone with the Met, soothing someone's frazzled nerves. He kissed her hello on the cheek, set the file aside, and went to poke around and see if anything was already cooking for dinner. He was deciding between sandwiches and ordering in when Elizabeth pushed through the door and slid her arms around his hips, peering past him into the fridge briefly.

"Long day?" he asked, as she rested her chin against his spine, up near his shoulder, digging it in a little.

"Could have been longer," she replied. "Indian?"

"Thai?" he counter-suggested, straightening slowly so she could let him go, let him turn and get his arms around her. "Or I could go for a steak."

"Hmm, we could go out," she said. "Get changed."

"Yes'm," he answered, heading up the stairs for the bedroom. "How's the last-minute stuff for the show tomorrow?"

"Pretty smooth, considering," she called back, halfway up the stairs. "Neal's not half the diva he pretends to be."

"He'd better not be," Peter growled.

"Relax. He gave me carte blanche for the preview, within the Met's budget, which is generous," she told him, moving past him in the bedroom to toss him a t-shirt. He watched her take her earrings out, her fingers drifting over the jumble of jewelery on the dresser before picking a necklace to wear. He came up behind her and took it, fastening it for her while she held her hair up.

"Then I think we deserve a night out," he said. "No Caffrey, no Nullier, no Met."

Which naturally meant that they got halfway through dinner before Peter's phone rang, Neal's number on the Caller ID. He sighed and answered it.

"I swear to god, unless this is an emergency -- " he started.

" _Pursuit_ is gone," Neal said. "It went missing from the Met's loading dock. They found out ten minutes ago."

Peter bit down on the urge to swear. They were in a nice restaurant, after all; no need to disturb everyone else just because he was going to have to leave his dinner and his wife and go chase bad guys.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Nope. I went through the rest, they're all accounted for. _Pursuit_ wasn't in the secure safe with the rest, it was still in its crate on the dock. _Field #1_ was too, but it's still there."

"You're at the Met? Is anyone with you?"

"Jones is on his way," Neal said. "The NYPD's here now. They're making noise about shutting down the show." Neal paused briefly. "Are you having dinner?"

"I was," Peter replied. "I'm out with El, I can be there in half an hour."

"Look, if you can get the NYPD off our ass I can handle this," Neal said. "Just get them to stop growling long enough for Jones to get here. We'll fill you in tomorrow."

"Neal, what are you planning?" Peter asked.

"Nothing. Jesus, I just want you to have a nice dinner," Neal replied, sounding annoyed enough that Peter believed him.

Well, maybe 85% believed him.

"Jones and I can handle this, but I wanted you in the loop. Tell Elizabeth she owes me one."

"I'll call Captain Shattuck and have him get his dogs off you," Peter said, hanging up and redialing. Elizabeth watched, half-perplexed, half-expectant, as he pulled a few strings and hopefully got everything calmed down a little. When he hung up, she frowned.

"Do you need to go?" she asked. Peter thought about saying yes; part of him wanted to go.

"No," he said instead. "Neal and Jones are handling it. Another painting was stolen. Right off the damn dock," he added, stabbing his steak with maybe more vigor than the meat required. "Neal says you owe him one for keeping me here."

"I'll send him cookies," Elizabeth said, touching his hand. "Sweetie, breathe. Can you do anything? Really? Other than try to catch them at the show tomorrow?"

"No," Peter said, relaxing a little. "We can process the scene, but they don't need me there for that. Jones can handle chain of custody."

"So. No work, no Caffrey, no Nullier, remember?" She leaned across the table and kissed him.

"Yeah. Okay," he agreed, and was rewarded with her smile.

***

The evidence van was leaving and Neal was sitting on the edge of the loading dock, elbows propped on the guardrail, when Jones stepped out through the side door for a smoke. He gave Neal a nod.

"Hey, can I bum one?" Neal asked, holding out a hand.

"You don't smoke," Jones said automatically.

"Well, I won't tell Dad if you won't," Neal replied. Jones grinned and passed him one, offering up the lighter. Neal lit the cigarette, passed the light back, and exhaled through his nose.

"How is this my life?" he asked. "Seriously. Any other artist, the night before a show, you lose a painting, that's a total pass for nervous breakdown. What do I do? I call my boss and help process the crime scene. I miss out on all the fun parts." He flicked ash off the end of the smoke. "I'm not a normal artist. I work for the Eff Bee Eye," he said, drawing the letters out slowly. Jones laughed.

"You really want a pass for a breakdown?" he asked. Neal shook his head.

"I want someone to stop stealing my paintings. And forging them."

"You don't think that's a little hypocritical?"

"It's really, really hypocritical." Neal laughed, coughing a little on the smoke. He ducked his head. "It'll be nice to see some of them again, though, when we hang them tomorrow. Especially _Baptism,_ it's one of my favorites. When I was painting it, Mozzie used to call it _Christ's Wet T-Shirt Contest_. Apparently people think it's a sublime commentary on sexuality and the Church."

"You a religious man?" Jones asked, grinning. Neal grinned back.

"No, but I once allegedly impersonated a priest," he said. He leaned back a little, thoughtfully. "You know whoever it is, they now own more original Nullier paintings than anyone else in the world. They have half my portraits, unless they fenced everything and we just haven't caught up yet. They fenced the landscape. I don't know what they thought they were doing with the forged pieces."

"They like portraits," Jones offered.

"Yeah, so why forge landscapes? It can't just be for the -- " Neal paused, then laughed.

"What?"

"Well, I know why I'd forge something like that. To see if it was good enough. Get it past the authenticators. Nullier has to be easy to pass off, because nobody knew where his paintings were. Nobody had a catalogue of them but me until now. But his style's pretty distinct, so the actual brushwork takes a lot of skill."

He caught Jones watching him. "What?"

Jones shrugged. "Met's been getting calls about your catalogue, that's all. People want to know how they found so many Nullier paintings. We're recording them all and checking against known offenders, but most of them are collectors or galleries. You might have more people at the preview tomorrow than you expect."

"Yeah?" Neal felt unaccountably pleased. "I gave June a bunch of invites, she said she'd bring some friends. I thought without any advance notice things might be kind of thin. You know they're massively overvalued, right?" he asked. "Inflated by demand and reputation. People aren't paying for the art, they're paying for the cachet. Or the investment. I think the only one who probably gets the value right is June, and she likes hers because I painted it."

"Hey, whatever gets you paid," Jones said with a shrug. "You liked painting 'em, right?"

"Pretty much. I didn't like painting _Pursuit_ , I was pissed as hell when I did that one. But mostly."

"And people like owning 'em, and can afford to drop the money the galleries are asking for. So everyone's happy," Jones said, as a young woman approached them at the edge of the dock.

"Mr. Caffrey," she said, hesitant. "The curator would like to know if you'd like to look over the final draft of the release for the press packet."

"An artist's work is never done," Neal told Jones, stubbing out his cigarette on the metal edge and flicking it absently into the ashtray twenty feet away. He pulled himself up by the railing. "Sure, let's have a look."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **[Ivan The Terrible And His Son Ivan On November 16, 1851](http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/210#)** by Ilya Repin
> 
> **[Detail](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_the_Terrible_%26_son_-_destroyed.jpg)** of the damage inflicted by Abram Balashev.


	2. Portrait of the Artist as a Con Man

Neal was twitchy the next morning, which Peter could understand; he didn't want to leave his paintings alone, even in secure storage, and he did after all have a show opening that evening. Peter had watched Elizabeth deal with openings before and knew that the prospect of putting oneself on display, of being judged by one's skills, was enough to put even arrogant, confident artists into fits; it was like having a performance review with Hughes, except it lasted for days. Neal, who never exposed any part of himself if he could help it, was probably suffering from the idea more than most, even if he was better at hiding it.

As soon as they finished the briefing on the Met robbery and the procedure for that evening, Neal took Jones and half a dozen junior field agents and bolted for the Met, where the techs were already installing cameras in the gallery and listening devices in most of the very pretty flower arrangements Elizabeth had ordered for the preview reception. Peter left him alone until early afternoon, when he came in to do the final check and equipment test.

They'd had photos of the stolen paintings hanging in the office for a few days and he'd had time to get used to them, plus they were small. When he walked into the exhibition gallery where Neal's work was hanging, he stopped for a moment to get his bearings.

Neal was straddling the top platform of a stepladder, a digital level pressed to the top of a painting frame. Next to him, one of the museum staff was attaching a small placard to the wall. The painting Neal was struggling with was one of the forged nightscapes, the red sun peeking eerily over his shoulder.

Twelve other pieces hung at even intervals around the room, each with their own little placard giving what provenance could be gathered -- the usual artist-medium-date-catalogue-number, all marked _Temporary Loan_ , some with brief descriptions underneath. In one corner was a larger placard with bigger text, outlining what the Met supposedly knew about Jeffrey Nullier, headed "Power/Mystery". Peter rolled his eyes, but he did a slow circuit of the paintings: _Baptism. Field #1. Blue Study_ and _Red Study_ (another matched set). _New Orleans Girl. Darwin's Proof Table_ , which Peter thought was probably the best and creepiest of them, a bald man with the skull almost visible through his skin, staring at an articulated animal skeleton. _Night Blaze_ , the one he'd given to June.

Peter heard Neal swearing, quietly; he pulled himself away from the paintings and walked over to the nightscape, tapping the lower left corner of the painting gently with one hand.

"Thanks," Neal said distractedly, as the digital level declared the painting even. He took his hands and the level away carefully, swung his leg over the stepladder, and descended. "And we're done. Hey, what do you think?"

"I think I want to know if there are any camera blind spots," Peter said.

"Jones is testing it now."

"You excited?" Peter asked, as Neal folded up the stepladder and passed it off to a museum installation contractor.

"Should I be?" Neal asked.

"Well, you're opening a show."

"It's just a sting, Peter," Neal said. "They haven't got me here because they want me here. I'm here because the FBI wants me here."

"People are still going to look," Peter pointed out. "The show's scheduled to run for weeks. Total strangers are going to walk right in and discover Jeffrey Nullier."

"Great, maybe they can make some postcards, or print my paintings on umbrellas like they do with the _Mona Lisa,_ " Neal said drily.

"Fine, you want to play it cool, keep going," Peter said. Neal turned to survey the room -- the paintings, the placards, the new self-portrait at the heart of the show. It was on display for viewing at the preview, but tomorrow it would be enclosed in a little curtained cubicle until the official evening opening. The perfect opportunity, in a room where the only guard was on the door and facing the other way, for their thief to get some alone-time with the painting. 

"It's pretty cool," Neal admitted, crossing his arms. "Most of these paintings have never been in the same room together before. I didn't notice _Darwin's Proof Table_ and _Kitchen_ have a mutual palette, that's a little scary."

"Why?" Peter asked.

"Because the first one's about death and the second one's about lunch?" Neal said, glancing at him.

" _Darwin's Proof Table_ is about death?"

"Well, yeah. He's dying," Neal said, pointing to the man in the painting. "That's why you can see his skull. I met him at the California Academy of Sciences museum. We struck up a conversation."

"Did you pick a dying man's pocket?" Peter asked.

"Sometimes I don't know where you get your ideas about me," Neal replied, no real hurt in his voice. "No. I bought him lunch, asked him what was so fascinating about the skeleton. He said the way the bones fit together is Darwin's proof table: you can see a human hand in a whale's flipper, a human spine when you watch a cat stretch. Really interesting guy. He was dying of cancer, decided to spend his last few months going to museums."

"So you painted him."

"He sat as a model for it. He said it felt like immortality," Neal said, looking like he was back in California, in some little studio somewhere, painting a dying man. He shook his head. "Anyway, it has the same palette as _Kitchen_ , which I did just to tease Kate. She hated that kitchen, it was some month-to-month place we rented in Ohio."

"I feel like I'm getting the backstage tour of Neal Caffrey's subconscious, and it frightens me," Peter said, as Jones approached. "Everything in place?"

"In place and functional. We're live and wired," Jones said. "Ready?"

"This should be fun," Neal said, and very few people would have caught the note of hesitation in his voice.

"Come on, Rembrandt," Peter answered, jerking his head at the outer gallery. "I'll take you home so you can get dressed for your big event."

***

By ten o'clock that night, Peter thought the show was going pretty well from a surveillance point of view. The camera over the door caught every patron's face as they entered, and Diana -- posing as an attendant checking registration -- passed the names back to Jones in sync. There were at least ten critics, drifting in and out, and a handful of reporters collecting their press packs. Elizabeth, supervising the caterers, had already given out a couple of business cards.

Peter was presenting himself as one of the high-level donors who'd received an invite, keeping mostly to the sidelines as he watched Neal work the room. Neal was glad-handing like it was a religious calling, taking the measure of each person he talked to. He was mostly playing the same conversation over and over: one of the guests at the preview would remark on a painting, Neal would introduce himself as Nullier's agent, they'd discuss how nice it was that he was bringing his work together or finally getting the credit he deserved, and then Neal would imagine he saw someone he needed to speak to, and move on to someone else. At one point Peter caught a surprised look on Neal's face, and drifted over to find him speaking with a young man who was very earnestly telling him about the use of traditional themes in Nullier's work.

"What was that all about?" he asked, when the young man wandered off.

"He's an art student," Neal said. "He told me he lied his way in."

"Diana's probably got him on the watchlist, then."

"I don't think he's our guy," Neal shook his head. "Actually, maybe. He really seemed to have some original thoughts about the work, I think he's here because he genuinely likes it."

"You're surprised?"

"I didn't think people saw it that way, that's all," Neal said. Peter made a mental note to get the full conversation from the wire Neal was wearing, later.

"Jones, keep an eye on the kid Neal was just talking to," Peter said into the wire in his watch, under cover of scratching his cheek.

"On it," Jones replied through his earbud.

"I hope it's not him," Neal said. "Bright kid. Listen, this could be someone trying to draw me out, or I'm thinking it could just be someone who wants to...collect. The motive for everything is pretty oblique, but we might be chasing the wrong fox here."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow. Get a drink, check in with El, make some more friends," Peter told him, eyes tracking the young man as he made his way towards _Fury_ , Neal's self-portrait, and then veered away from it. Peter couldn't blame him; nearly everyone there had some experience with the paintings of Jeffrey Nullier, and there was still a wide empty place around the piece. People passing through the eyeline of the painting tended to shuffle quickly away, most of them without seeming to notice they did it. If Neal had wanted to disturb and frighten, he was succeeding. Elizabeth had been forced to move one of the tables at the last minute so the servers wouldn't feel like the painting was watching them.

Peter did a check for Elizabeth and found her in quiet conference with one of the bartenders, apparently keeping busy. He moved towards the edges of the crowd again, pretending to be fascinated by _Baptism_ \-- the realistically painted figure of a young clean-shaven Christ, hand upraised in an attitude of blessing, looking a little surprised and very wet, like he'd just been hit with a bucket of water. Peter wondered if there was a story behind that, too.

"Boss, we have a late visitor," Diana said in his earbud. He glanced at her sidelong. "Woman in the brown jacket. She just bribed her way in, gave her name as Christina Kell."

"Where have I heard that before?" Peter muttered, rubbing his jaw to get the watch near his face.

"She's the one who wrote the thesis on Nullier," Jones supplied.

"I'll keep an eye on her," Peter promised. "Neal, you get that?"

"Loud and clear," Neal murmured into his radio.

Peter followed he as she made her way around the room, on the circuit everyone seemed to take along the walls, but when she reached _Fury_ she stopped and stared at it, minutes ticking past as she studied it carefully. Nobody else had spent so much time looking at it; even the critics had examined it and then moved on quickly, nervously.

She was obviously wearing her best for the occasion, but she still seemed slightly out of place, not quite as formally dressed as the other guests. She had a narrow, freckled face, brown hair cut short, and paint under her fingernails, trapped in the cuticles the way it had been on Neal's hands when he'd finished the painting. The room was warm, but she hadn't taken her coat off.

"Nullier is a compelling painter," he said, approaching her, trying to strike up a conversation. "People don't seem overwhelmingly attracted to the new one."

"The eyes look right into you," she replied, without looking away from the painting. "He looks like he's going to bite."

"Just a painting, fortunately," Peter remarked. "Are you familiar with Nullier's work?"

"I'm getting there," she said.

"Nice to see so many of them assembled. He's finally getting the credit he's due," Peter tried.

She shrugged. "I don't know if I'd say that."

_Come on,_ he thought. _Take an opening._ "Peter Burke," he offered, holding out his hand. She turned, a false sort of smile on her face, and he gave her his best genuine smile in return. She reached for his hand, caught his face, and then turned pale.

"I don't bite either," he said, but he turned his hand over and let it fall back to his side.

" _Man With Fedora_ ," she hissed.

Peter just had time for a brief moment of dismay that he'd been made before she was actively recoiling, which didn't really seem fair. And then she reached inside her coat and, as these things always did when the suspect went for a weapon, time slowed way down.

"Gun," Peter heard himself shout, even as Jones was yelling it in his ear too. "Everybody down -- "

But it wasn't a gun; there was a flash of steel, too bright and sharp for a gun. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Diana drop her clipboard and bolt across the room towards him. The other agent monitoring the room was coming from his other side, and even as the knife appeared in her hand Peter did a safety-check for Elizabeth -- there she was, crouched by the drinks table, Neal with one arm around her and holding her head down protectively.

Peter jerked back, away from the blade, but it was a split-second too late and the knife was very sharp. The tip sunk deep into his shoulder and _pulled_ before he got his arm up and knocked her aside, weakening the force of the drive but not diverting it completely. She cried out and the movement shifted his muscle around the knife, agonizingly, but then Diana was there hauling her off him, while she screamed obscenities and everyone else just screamed and the knife clattered to the floor.

Peter looked down at the gash on his shoulder, blood burbling around it.

"That's not good," he said, as the world began to spin. Agents were pouring into the gallery, and Peter did another vague check for Elizabeth and Neal, only to find Neal right in front of him, mouthing words Peter couldn't hear. Someone caught him as he started to fall, jarring his shoulder, and he got a glimpse of a spray of blood across the face of _Fury_ (or maybe Neal's face; the world was sort of two-dimensional) before he passed out.

***

He woke briefly in the ambulance, disoriented for a moment; his shoulder burned, nerves screaming. He tried to raise his hand to put pressure on it, but someone already was -- one of the EMTs, looking down at him and calling orders to her partner.

"You're cool, you're okay," she told him, smiling reassuringly. "You're losing some blood but you're going to be fine."

"Get her?" he managed. "Bag the knife."

"Cops," she said, rolling her eyes. "They said they had someone in custody. Your wife's right behind us with your partner. I'm sure they bagged the knife. Deep breaths with me, okay, Agent Burke? Nothing to worry about, just inhale, exhale."

Peter closed his eyes and breathed, in and out, until he lost consciousness again.

When he came back to reality for the second time, he found himself sitting up on the edge of a hospital bed, staring at his own arm. There was an IV needle taped down to it, and he followed the line up to a bag hanging nearby.

"Hey, you back with us?" someone said, and he turned his head to find a man in scrubs putting stitches into his shoulder. It didn't hurt; the numbness spreading through his arm and up his throat felt like local anaesthetic.

"Yeah," he tried, and then cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeah. What's the damage?"

"Twelve stitches," the doctor told him, tying one off and clipping it neatly. "You're a lucky man, Agent Burke. The cut's not that deep."

"Where's the knife?" he asked.

"Your Agent Barrigan thought you'd ask that. She said to tell you it's in evidence," the man assured him. "Your wife and brother-in-law are here, if you'd like to see them."

Elizabeth didn't have any brothers; Peter frowned, and then nodded. Neal, of course. Family were the only ones allowed in, aside from LEOs, and Neal was only a consultant. He looked enough like Elizabeth to pull that off.

"I want to see them," he said. The doctor tied the last stitch and taped a bandage over the wound.

"Okay. I'll write up some prescriptions for the pain and get you a care printout," he said. "We'd like to keep you overnight if we can."

Peter nodded and the doctor clapped him on his good shoulder and left. Peter sat and studied his IV some more until Elizabeth pushed past the privacy curtain.

"Hey, hon," he said, as she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest. "Hey, it's okay," he added, trying to lift a hand to stroke her head and not getting very far with either arm. Neal was standing near the curtain, watching warily, and Peter shot him a hapless look.

"Elizabeth, you're gonna break some ribs," Neal said, and she immediately let Peter go, wiping tears off her face. "Hey, way to go, getting knifed," Neal added.

"It wasn't a goal," Peter retorted, as Elizabeth leaned against him at an angle where he could put his good arm around her waist. He kissed her hair, inhaling, steadying himself on the smell of her shampoo. "I'm okay," he added to El, talking into her hair. "Twelve stitches and a local." Elizabeth liked to know all the details, because then at least she wasn't worrying about the abstract. "They'll keep me overnight, I'll go home in the morning. It's fine."

He rested his chin on her head and glanced at Neal again. There were a few drops of blood on Neal's collar and the edge of his jaw; must have been him that got hit and not the painting, then. A dark streak along the side of his nose said he'd probably half-assedly washed the rest off.

"She's in custody," Neal said quietly, glancing at Elizabeth, checking to make sure it was okay to talk about. "They've got her in detention for tonight. Diana called in a warrant, they're tossing her place now. I told them to text if they found something. _Jesus Christ_ , Peter," he added, which seemed random until Peter saw Neal's hands shaking. He'd held it together just long enough to get out the information Peter would want to know, and now Peter had two people falling apart on him.

"Get over here," Peter ordered. "My arms are messed up, hug Elizabeth for me."

Elizabeth turned, without even looking, and let Neal wrap his arms around her, squeezing him tightly. Neal flinched for a minute, but his hands weren't shaking quite so badly. Slowly, hesitantly, he leaned forward a little and rested his forehead against Peter's temple.

"It's okay," Peter repeated. "I'm fine, I'll be okay."

"Okay," Neal agreed. They stayed like that for a minute, until Peter spoke again.

"Brother-in-law, huh?" he asked, and Neal laughed.

"Hey, they bought it," he said, pulling back. Elizabeth stepped back too, sniffling and digging in her purse for a tissue. Neal passed her his pocket square absently. "I didn't think 'I'm his criminal informant' would go over big with the nurses."

"Do we know what happened?" Peter asked. Neal shook his head.

"She's pretty obviously mentally ill," he said. "It sounded like she recognized you from _Man With Fedora_. After she cut you she went for _Fury_ with her bare hands."

"What kind of person does that?" Elizabeth asked angrily. Peter took her hand and held it, resting on his leg, thumb rubbing soothingly across her palm. She wiped her nose with Neal's pocket square and leaned against Peter's knee. He made sure he got eye contact and a slightly wavery smile from her before he turned back to Neal.

"You think she's our thief?" he asked.

Neal shrugged. "She's an artist. She probably has the chops to do the forgeries, so it seems reasonable. Plus she's familiar with _Man With Fedora_ , enough that she knew it was you. Diana thinks she was going to try and mutilate one of the paintings. No other reason she'd have a knife, especially one sharp enough to cut varnish and canvas."

"Anyone try to interrogate her yet?" Peter asked.

"Diana's running the case. She said nobody talks to Christina Kell until Diana talks to you."

"Good. You want to let her know what's going on?"

Neal nodded and took his phone out, disappearing through the privacy curtain. Peter turned back to Elizabeth, who gave him another smile.

"I get scared when you get hurt," she said softly.

"Me too," he admitted, kissing her. "I didn't mean to worry you."

"At least it's not a gunshot," she said. "If they had to put you in surgery I was going to freak out." After a while, she added, "I think you freaked Neal out worse. He's not used to you and hospitals."

"So you had to deal with him, too?" Peter asked.

"It wasn't bad. He just kept repeating it wasn't worth the stupid paintings, until Diana told him to shut it and sit quietly." Elizabeth's smile widened. "You've got them both trained."

"I hope so," Peter grumbled, as Neal came back in.

"Jones is letting everyone know," he said. "They haven't found anything yet. They think she has a cache somewhere."

"We should find out -- " Peter, instinctively, started to get off the bed; he had an interrogation to perform. Elizabeth put a hand on his chest and pushed back gently. "Right. Okay. Not tonight."

"Not tonight," she agreed, as a nurse appeared, brushing past Neal.

"Sir, ma'am," she said. "Agent Burke needs to rest. For you," she added, offering Peter a cup of water and a little plastic tray with two pills in it. "Painkiller and a light sedative, just to get you to sleep."

"Can we stay?" Neal asked, fumbling for his ID wallet. "Look -- I'm law enforcement, I work for the FBI. I can say we have to stay, right?"

Peter caught Elizabeth trying not to smile.

The nurse glanced at the wallet he was holding out and shook her head. "You can stay until he falls asleep. Agent Burke, you okay with that?"

Peter nodded, swallowing the pills, the cold water soothing in his mouth, on his raw throat. He let Elizabeth take the cup from him and give him another soft push back onto the bed. She didn't even let go of his hand as she pulled a chair around to sit with him. He closed his eyes -- inhale, exhale, everything was okay -- and heard the shift and creak as Neal sat down as well.

It abruptly struck Peter as funny, Neal trying to badge his way into staying the night, and he said " _I'm law enforcement_ ," and began to laugh. He heard Neal's rueful chuckle and Elizabeth's laughter, too, and slipped down into sleep.

***

Peter slept soundly but woke stiff the next morning, muscles protesting when he tried to sit up. His shoulder ached, but not enough to be distracting, and it helped clear the fuzzy aftereffects of sleep out of his brain.

It was early still, early enough that he wasn't too worried about getting to the office on time, especially since it was a Saturday. They fed him a decent breakfast, changed the dressing on his shoulder, pressed painkillers and antibiotics on him, and ordered him to keep his arm immobilized for a few days.

After that they let Elizabeth in to see him, dragging Neal with her and carrying a pile of clothes for him. He would have preferred a t-shirt to work clothes, but as soon as he tried to get his arm through the sleeve he saw her logic -- he couldn't have raised it high enough for anything that didn't button. Dressing the rest of himself one-handed wasn't exactly fun, but Neal presented him with a tie already knotted (double-windsor, showoff) and then offered him a belt strung with his gun and spare clips in a hip holster. No shoulder holster; well, of course. Not for a while.

"Where'd you get this holster?" Peter asked, perplexed, as he threaded the belt clumsily through the loops.

"Your closet," Neal replied.

"When were you in my closet?"

"Last night," Neal said. He plucked the uneaten apple off Peter's breakfast tray and bit into it. "Also, your guest bedroom. I like the quilt."

"Thanks, my mother made it," Peter replied, distracted. "Why were you in our guest room?"

"I wanted someone around the house," Elizabeth said, with a look that clearly announced _Neal wanted someone around the house_. It was a little gratifying to know that a stab wound could have such an effect on his partner, but they had a job to do. "Neal stayed in the guest room. Now. Office or home?"

"Office," Peter sighed, pulling the sling over his head and settling his arm in it. "We need to talk to Christina Kell."

Elizabeth left them at the office with instructions for Peter not to strain himself, and instructions for Neal about what to do when Peter inevitably strained himself. When they reached the detention and information retrieval floor (Information Retrieval; such a nice term for interrogation) Diana was already there, waiting for them, and Christina Kell was sitting in an interrogation room. She was rocking back and forth slightly.

Peter watched her through the one-way glass, wondering what was going through her head. "Get anything out of her?"

"Nope," Diana said. "She won't talk. Hasn't requested a lawyer, but hasn't waived her right to one either."

"Next of kin?"

"Trying to find them now."

"Can we get a psych consult lined up?" he asked.

"Hard to do on a Saturday," Diana told him. "I didn't want to get that ball rolling until you were here. How's the shoulder?"

"Fine," he said absently. He glanced at Neal, who was watching her also, his face a smooth and unreadable mask. Peter would give even more to know what was going through Neal's head than to know what was going through Christina's. He turned away again. "I don't think I should be the one to talk to her. She's got some kind of delusion going on about the paintings, and she thinks I'm _Man With Fedora_. I'm not going to help her mental state."

"Can I do it?" Neal asked. Peter saw Diana giving Neal the same surprised look he probably was. Neal met their gaze. "I'm an artist, I'm a thief, I get it. I want to know why she stole my paintings. Maybe she wants to talk to Jeffrey Nullier. I got a lot of cards to play with her."

"You need an agent in the room," Peter said. "Diana, go with him."

Neal shot him a smile and gathered up the file on the thefts, going for the door; Diana drew close and murmured, "You sure you want to do this?"

"I don't see what other options we have. Once she has her psych evaluation, we won't get another shot."

"And isn't that a murky grey area kind of thing to say," Diana pointed out.

"All I want is her cache," Peter replied. "Go. Grab her if she goes for Neal. That's all you have to do. This isn't optional, Diana."

She nodded, still a little wary, and walked out the door. After a few seconds, she and Neal walked into the interrogation room together, and Peter watched through the glass as Diana took up a position against the wall. Christina didn't seem to recognize Neal from his portrait when he sat down; without the anger in his face, Peter couldn't say if he'd recognize Neal from the portrait either.

"Hi," Neal said, and the mirror in the corner showed him smiling at her. She didn't respond, but he doubted Neal expected a response. This was the start of the patter -- hypnotic, distracting, nothing that would even require thought on the part of the mark. "Do you know why you're here today? You're in for assaulting a federal agent. He's fine, by the way. He's watching through that glass there," Neal said, and pointed over his shoulder. "Twelve stitches, but the guy's a trouper."

"What are you doing?" Peter muttered, knowing Neal couldn't hear him.

"He's not going to hold a grudge, but you'll probably do time. The government doesn't like it," Neal said, all sympathy. "Tough break. We have you on camera, though, so we don't need to question you about that. The state-appointed psychiatrist assigned to your case will interview you about it. But you can make things better for yourself, easier on you," he continued, opening the file folder. Peter noticed that Christina had stopped rocking, and was focused on his hands. He pressed one over the top report sheet.

"Say that someone was stealing paintings by a man named Jeffrey Nullier," Neal said, and Christina's shoulders pulled taut, inwards, tense. "I have a theory, a little imaginary story I want to ask you about. It's not hard to steal paintings, is it? Especially if they're not very secure. Minor galleries, isolated houses. But this one," he said, taking out a photograph of the landscape that had been stolen from Trumbull. "This job, theoretically, was a little more difficult. Maybe our thief hired some agents to get some paintings for her. If you want a thing done right, though, you just have to do it yourself, don't you?" he asked, smiling. "They weren't supposed to take the landscape, were they? Did you even know they got a couple of Picassos and a Degas as well?"

He passed the landscape across the table, following it with the other paintings taken from Trumbull, except for the two portraits. Christina looked -- hungry, expectant, as if she was waiting for the portraits. When Neal closed the folder again, her eyebrows drew together.

"These," he said, "Were done for hire, weren't they? What screw-ups, huh? They should go down just for being stupid. Don't you think?"

Peter was not completely surprised, though he was a little impressed, when Christina said, "Yes."

"You know who they were?"

"Yes."

"Did you hire them, Christina?"

"Yes," she said, and Peter felt his shoulder burn as his muscles tightened. _Yes_. Even if she pled insanity, they had a confession.

But that didn't even seem to be what Neal was looking for. He didn't press for their names or for any particulars. Instead he reached into the folder and set out _Robbing Titian_ , the portrait of the redhead. "Still, they can't have been totally incompetent. They brought you this one, huh?"

"Yes," Christina answered, staring at it. Peter couldn't tell whether the fear on her face was for the painting or for Neal.

"You know what she's called?"

" _Robbing Titian_."

"Mmhm. You know where she is?" Neal asked, tone not varying at all. Christina looked up at him then, defiant.

"Safe," she said.

"Where's she safe?" Neal asked.

"Somewhere nobody can find," Christina said. Neal opened the file again and laid _Man With Fedora_ in front of her.

"And him?"

" _Man With Fedora_ ," she almost sobbed, looking away.

"Where is he, Christina?"

" _Safe!_ " she shouted.

"How do you know?" Neal asked. "You're here. They're there. How do you know they're safe?"

"I made sure of it," she answered. Neal took another photo out of the file.

"Who's this, Christina?" he asked, and Peter could hear, if she couldn't, the dangerous tone growing in his voice.

" _Pursuit_ ," she replied.

"Where is he?"

"SAFE."

Neal didn't even flinch when she shouted, just laid down a fourth photo.

"Christina, who is -- "

" _Keystone_ , and she's safe!" Christina insisted.

Neal paused. Finally he laid down the last photo -- the portrait of Kate.

"Who is this?" he asked.

" _Field #2_ ," she replied. "She's -- "

"No," Neal said. Christina stopped abruptly. Diana glanced at the glass, at Peter, who consciously uncurled the fist his right hand was making. "Her name is Kate."

"No, that's not right," Christina insisted. "That's _Field #2._ "

"No. That's Kate," Neal replied. "The woman in the painting is named Kate."

Christina looked down at it.

"I know the name of the woman in the painting, because I knew her," Neal continued, voice persuasive. "Her name is Kate. You took her away from the other painting, Christina. That was wrong. You broke a set. I don't think Kate would like that. Look at me, Christina," he said, and then repeated it when she wouldn't. " _Look at me!_ "

Her eyes snapped up. Neal held her gaze for a minute and then touched each photograph in turn.

"This is Magdalen," he said, and Peter made a note to look up the name. "This is Peter. This is Sergeant Petrow. This is Alexandra. This is Kate. You stole them, Christina."

"I made them safe," Christina whispered.

"You stole them. They don't belong to you. They belong to me," Neal said. "I painted them, Christina."

Her face went pale.

"I painted these," Neal repeated. "And _Fury_ , too. Weren't you going to slash _Fury_ when you came to the preview last night? That's why you had the knife, isn't it? You were going to attack my painting?"

"I -- I don't -- "

"You took them and I want them back," Neal said, leaning close. Peter saw Diana, ready to move fast if Christina went after Neal. "You took my faces, Christina. You took my faces and _I want my faces back!_ "

"No!" Christina wailed, and started to cry.

"Give them back, Christina, give me back my faces," Neal insisted, almost shouting now, inches from her. "They're mine, Christina, and I want them back!"

"I buried them!" she cried, and Neal didn't give an inch until she added, "They can't hurt anyone now!"

Neal rocked back, shocked. He eyed her across the table for a minute, while Peter reformulated the entire theory of the case. Possibly Neal was doing the same thing, on the other side of the glass.

"When you said they were safe," Neal said, softer again, persuasive again. Peter wondered if he'd been taking notes on other interrogations, or if he was just a natural, "you meant, we were safe from them."

Christina gave a wretched nod. Peter took out his cellphone and dialed.

"I want them back," Neal continued, voice still quiet. "I'll make sure they don't hurt anyone, Christina, but you have to give them back to me."

"You can't have them," she said.

"Jones," Peter said, when Jones picked up. "Are you at the house?"

"Yeah, we're going through the second floor again, why?"

"Does she have a basement?" Peter asked. In the background he heard Christina weeping, and the slam of a door.

"Yeah, but we looked down there."

"Take measurements," Peter said. "She told Neal she buried the paintings. Make sure there aren't any false walls. Look around for fresh concrete, fresh dirt outside."

"Can do. We'll call if we find anything."

Peter hung up and glanced through the glass; Christina was alone in the room. He expected Neal and Diana to come back into the observation room, but after a long minute he opened the door and peered out.

Neal was sitting with his back against the wall, head in his hands. Diana was standing over him, an indecisive expression on her face.

"This is crap," Neal said, when he heard Peter emerge. "They're just some fucking paintings. I'll do new ones."

"She broke the law," Peter said.

"She's sick, Peter. She thinks she's protecting the world from," Neal snorted, tipping his head back, "from Kate and Alex and you and Magdalen and Scotty Petrow. Five of the least evil people I know. And I just tried to destroy her, and this is not okay."

"Neal -- "

"No. I'm not going back in there to abuse a mentally ill woman, Peter, screw the case. They're just paintings, they're not worth what I did to her." Neal pushed himself up the wall and started to walk away, only to find his path blocked by Diana.

"Oh, do you really want to get into it with me?" she said, when Neal's hands clenched. Peter watched, fascinated and aware he should probably be doing something, but Diana just stood there until Neal backed down and leaned against the wall again.

Peter's phone rang, startling all three of them.

"Yeah," Peter answered, when he saw it was Jones.

"I think you better come see this," Jones told him.

***

"Before you go in there," Jones warned, walking backwards up the sidewalk to Christina Kell's small suburban house, talking to Peter as he went, "do you know what the Wall Of Crazy is?"

"The what?" Peter asked, as Jones opened the front door.

"It's a cliché," Neal supplied. He'd been silent for most of the drive out, not sulking, just the sort of exhausted silence Peter had occasionally encountered from him at the end of a long case. "The detectives find out where the stalker or killer lives and they walk inside and find the wall plastered with cutouts and writing and photographs. Wall of Crazy."

"Yeah, well, we got something like that here," Jones said, leading them through the kitchen (clean, but covered in paint-stained dropcloths; clearly a studio) and down a set of stairs to the basement.

The walls were wood-paneled, like something out of the fifties, wainscotted up to about four feet before dingy, damp wallpaper started. It was full of the usual storage junk -- boxes, broken things, bits of unidentifiable furniture -- all of which had been pushed away from the back wall. Jones went up to the wall and pressed on one panel. It swung inwards.

Peter ducked through carefully and found himself in a narrow room lit primarily by FBI-issue excavation lamps, the battery operated bare-bulb lights they usually brought out for nighttime body hunts. Neal followed before he could stop him.

He heard Diana swear, briefly, and a low shocked noise from Neal, but it was hard to process anything except the wall in front of him.

Seven paintings -- the five they knew about, two others that perhaps had been stolen and replaced with copies -- hung on the wall in a neat row, a strange mockery of the exhibit at the Met. They were surrounded by clippings about Nullier and webpage printouts of his art from auction houses and galleries, but that was hardly what drew his attention.

Every single one of them had been slashed with a sharp blade, over and over again, erratic and furious. Some were hanging in tattered strips, others showing gaps where pieces of canvas had fallen to the floor. Peter saw, with a twist of nausea, _Man With Fedora_ , the smiling mouth shredded and gaping.

He turned to Neal, who had gone completely white.

"You okay?" he asked Neal, quietly.

"Why would -- " Neal started, and then shook his head, because he already knew the answer. _Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan_. Neal had reached into someone's mind and pulled out her nightmares, and that seemed to make him even more upset.

"Get him out of here," Peter said, but Neal struggled out of Jones's grip and started forward, crouching to pick up a strip of canvas that lay in the dust below _Field #2_. He rubbed it against his palm unsteadily and then wrapped it around his hand. One of Kate's eyes looked up at Peter from Neal's fingers, briefly, before Diana took hold of him and pulled him back. This time he didn't resist, just stumbled backwards into the wall and let her bend him to push him out of the room.

"Let's get the scene processed," Peter said. "Get them wrapped as carefully as you can and send them back to evidence. Call the owners -- take photographs of the two we didn't know about, we'll match them against the list Neal has."

The evidence techs, who had apparently just been waiting for the order, began scurrying around under Jones's watchful eye, bagging pieces of canvas and carefully photographing the paintings. Peter ducked back out into the basement and came up the stairs; through the open front door he saw Neal sitting on the outside step, still winding and unwinding the strip of painting around his fingers, dried paint cracking under the strain and flaking away. Kate's eye winked, disappeared, returned. Peter settled next to him, wincing as he lowered himself down with one hand. He put out his hand and covered Neal's with it, pulling the canvas away from him, tucking it into an evidence bag before putting it in his pocket.

"They were a joke," Neal said, after a while. "They were just something to pass the time. They're not worth the money. I'd be fine giving them away."

"You wondered what it would be like to have the power Repin did," Peter reminded him. "You wanted to know how it would feel."

"Peter -- "

"Consequences, Neal," Peter said, shaking his head, cutting Neal off. "Nobody is above them."

Neal looked down at his hands, flecked with paint dust from the canvas. "This wasn't how this con was supposed to work."

"That's because it's not a con," Peter answered. "Being an artist isn't a con just because other people think your paintings are more valuable than you do. You did these paintings and they said something. You didn't take that seriously."

"So, what, I'm to blame for that?" Neal asked, gesturing over his shoulder. "Thanks, Peter."

"No," Peter said. "This isn't your fault. But if it really were a joke, this wouldn't have happened. Take yourself seriously for once in your damn life, Neal. It's okay for these paintings to mean something to you. It's okay to be hurt that someone did that. Stop fighting it."

Neal let out a long, slow breath. "Is someone telling the owners?"

"Jones has it covered. Look, this is good work. We have a confession from Christina, we got the paintings back, and we can probably go after the rest of the art they took from Trumbull once Christina gives us a name. I'm closing the Nullier case. It's over."

Another slow breath. Peter realized Neal was trying not to cry.

"I'll get in touch with the owners," Neal said. "I can offer to restore the portraits, at least."

"Let's worry about that once we get them back to the Bureau, get the damage assessed," Peter said. "You don't have to do it today. Besides," he added, grinning, "you have an opening to attend."

"Ungh," Neal moaned, leaning back, closing his eyes. "We caught her. Do I have to? I don't think I could look _Field #1_ in the face right now."

"Diva," Peter told him.

"Bastard," Neal retorted.

"Hey, I took a knife for you, some respect here," Peter insisted. Neal laughed; Terrible Crying Situation officially averted. "Look, I'll find someone to take you back to June's. I'm staying here to help with the cleanup."

"No, I'll stay," Neal said, as Jones emerged from the house carrying _Pursuit_. "I should make sure they don't mishandle them."

He made no move to get up, though; he just sat and watched as Jones loaded _Pursuit_ 's ruined remains into the evidence van, and then as one of the techs loaded _Man With Fedora_.

"I'm sorry she wrecked your face," Neal said.

"Still not sorry you stole it, though?" Peter asked.

"All my best work is in the field of theft," Neal said. "Allegedly."

"Mmhm." Peter rubbed his injured shoulder absently, trying to stop the muscles from cramping. "Next time, just ask."

"It's more fun to ask forgiveness than permission," Neal replied, and stood up. " _Keystone_ looked like it got shredded. I'm going to go see how they're doing."

Peter nodded and decided to supervise from the step, while the techs streamed around him and Jones and Diana conferred about something nearby. He watched Neal approach the van and climb inside, crouching in front of the paintings, fingers drifting over the plastic covering them. Now that the shock had worn off, Neal had a look of intense concentration on his face; probably already working on how to restore them.

"Consequences," Peter sighed, and got up to check on how the evidence collection was going.

***

On Monday, they had their report from the psychologist who interviewed Christina; he mentioned undiagnosed schizophrenia, coupled with the stress of recent deaths in the family, and recommended the FBI plead her out as mentally unfit to stand trial. He obviously wasn't used to dealing with the White Collar division, where they didn't go in for revenge as much as some other departments could; he seemed nervous giving his report to Peter.

"I know that you're probably not feeling very forgiving right now," he said, eyes flicking to Peter's sling. "But she genuinely believes she stabbed you in self-defense. It's regrettable, and certainly it seems like she must have some culpability for the thefts and forgeries, but people who have dissociated with reality are still capable of functioning in the real world. She thought she was doing good."

"Did she explain the forgeries?" Peter asked, ignoring the rest.

"It's hard to get a clear picture, but I think she admired Mr. Nullier. The forgeries may have been her way of trying to draw his attention, or perhaps some kind of...ritual shielding. Maybe she thought if she could replace the portraits with less harmful images..." the man shrugged. "Agent Burke, this is going to take a long time to understand, but she needs treatment, not punishment."

"The FBI is required to press charges when an agent is injured," Peter said. "I'll speak on her behalf at the hearing."

"You will?"

"I have bigger problems than being stabbed, frankly," Peter said, eyes drifting out to where Neal was holding court in the bullpen, telling some probably exaggerated story to the probies. There was a slightly manic edge to his movements. After Peter had Jones drop him at home, he hadn't heard from him the rest of the weekend, but June assured Peter when he called on Sunday that Neal was fine.

"That's -- unusually understanding of you," the man said.

"We try not to unbalance the scales," Peter said. "If she can give us the names of her accomplices..."

"I'll speak to her lawyer about it."

"This could have been a lot worse," Peter said, standing to shake the man's hand.

"How so?" he asked, and Peter thought, _You know how._ It was a game -- a question to get a bead on Peter's mental state.

"She could have been doing that to people," Peter told him. The man nodded and left. Neal watched him go; as soon as he was in the elevator, Neal came up to Peter's office, leaning in the doorway.

"So?" he said.

"She'll probably plead as mentally unfit. She'll get treatment," Peter said, and noticed the fractional relaxation in Neal's shoulders. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Neal said, shrugging.

"You talk to the owners about restoring the paintings?"

Neal nodded. "Once they're out of evidence I'll take them to my place, back them, do some touch-up work. Most of them won't look too bad. I might have to crop _Keystone_ , pretty much the entire bottom half is confetti. _Man With Fedora_ will be okay," he added with a smile. Peter grunted.

"You're fine with working on them?" Peter asked.

"Yeah, it's..." Neal broke eye contact. "Not easy to look at them. I'm not used to stuff like this mattering. It'll be good, though."

"Lesson learned?"

Neal rolled his eyes. "Okay, I get it, there's a moral to the story. Hey, that reminds me, check it out." Neal took a handful of paper slips out of his inside pocket and waved them. "Offers on _Fury_."

"Already? Who's the lucky buyer?" Peter asked.

"Nobody, yet. I'm selling it in a set with a new work." Neal tipped his head at Peter's computer as he tucked the offer slips away. "I just did it this weekend. Check the Erickson Auction House site."

Peter called up the auction house, the same one that had bought the forgeries, and clicked on the name _Jeffrey Nullier_. Two images came up: _Fury_ , photographed at the Met, and a second image obviously taken in Neal's home, a painting sitting on an easel. This one was a nude, or at least part of one: a portion of a man's chest and shoulder, part of his throat. There was a white bandage on the shoulder, blood staining the bandage from the inside. Peter put his hand to his own shoulder, thoughtfully.

"It's called _Consequences_ ," Neal said. Peter noticed a mark on the body's throat, a mole right in the hollow above the clavicles. He had one just like it. 

"You _stole my chest_ ," Peter said, glaring at him. Neal laughed and ducked the wad of paper Peter fetched up and threw at his head. "Neal!"

Neal stood behind the glass wall of Peter's office and gave him an impenitent shrug. "It's hard to find compelling subjects," he said through the glass. Peter threw another crumpled up paper ball at the glass. Neal leaned back as it bounced off harmlessly. "Elizabeth said you shouldn't strain yourself!"

"Jones!" Peter yelled. "Come strangle Neal for me."

"We get to do that?" Jones asked, appearing from the conference room.

"I'll buy you coffee," Neal offered, obviously trying to salvage the situation. "Lunch? You want lunch?"

"Scram," Peter told him. "Out of my sight. Thief!" he yelled after him, as Neal walked down the steps.

"You're a philistine, Diderot!" Neal called back. Hughes leaned in the doorway to Peter's office.

"You two done with the Cop And Robber Show?" he asked.

"He started it," Peter said.

"I should ground them both," Hughes muttered, and went back to his office.

***

**Grief And Restoration: The Mutilated Masterpieces Of Jeffrey Nullier**

Release for General Press - The Metropolitan Museum Of Art is pleased to extend its showing of the work of Jeffrey Nullier, contemporary impressionist, formerly titled "Power/Mystery". The new exhibit, "Grief And Restoration: The Mutilated Masterpieces" features seven restored canvases on loan from private owners. These seven paintings, damaged while in the hands of an art thief, were restored by the artist himself, documented at every step in a series of compelling photographs also on display.

Nullier's work recently drew attention when several of his paintings were reported stolen from private collections. Investigation of the thefts led to the home of a mentally ill artist who had hidden the paintings in her basement before slashing each portrait with a knife for reasons not yet clear. Once the works were recovered, Nullier contacted the owners through intermediaries, restoring each painting with painstaking care.

In a letter to the museum, Nullier says of his work that it is intended "to capture moments in time that strike the eye, both real and symbolic" and "to challenge perceptions, mine included, of what is valuable in art". In an unusual move for the reclusive artist, he has identified some of the models in his earlier work, requesting that _Field #1_ and _Field #2_ , a two-piece set of paintings, be renamed _Kate #1_ and _Kate #2_. He has also identified the man in _Darwin's Proof Table_ as Jacob Ehlert, a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who died of lung cancer in May of 2002. Critics have pointed out the presence of distinguishing marks on _Man With Fedora_ and _Consequences_ , both recent works, which have led to the supposition that they may be the same model. _Fury_ , which is presented as a set with _Consequences_ , has been tentatively identified as Nullier's agent, who helped to recover the paintings.

The models and origins for seminal works such as _New Orleans Girl_ and _Baptism_ remain a mystery.

The question of Jeffrey Nullier's identity also remains unsolved. Working without representation for his entire career before entering a five-year seclusion, Nullier has now begun to take a more active role in the management of his work. His catalogue, including partial provenances, is available via the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website. Images of Nullier's work have also been archived for research purposes. Scholars and collectors interested in contacting Jeffrey Nullier may inquire through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Curatorial Staff, or via his agent, Nick Halden, at the contact address listed on the following page. Mr. Halden advises that Mr. Nullier does not accept commissions or grant interviews.

***

_Excerpted from the entry on "Jeffrey Nullier" at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:_  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Nullier#Caffrey-Burke

**The Caffrey-Burke Connection**

While it has never been confirmed by artist or model, _Consequences_ has been identified by Nullier scholars as FBI Special Agent Peter Burke, who received a similar injury in the course of investigating the thefts of Nullier's portraits in 2011[7]. This links Burke also to _Man With Fedora_ [8], one of the mutilated portraits, likely painted in early 2010, prior to the thefts. If Nullier and Burke were acquaintances by early 2010 they may have met through Neal Caffrey, an amateur artist and colleague of Burke's who for many years went by the pseudonym Nick Halden while representing Nullier after his return to painting. Caffrey has said that he thinks highly of Nullier's work and that he and Burke both found it a great pleasure to work with the artist during the investigation.[citation needed]

Burke has declined many times to comment on the investigation or his association with Nullier, refusing to reveal whether he has ever sat as a model for the artist[citation needed]. There is still some debate as to whether two works by Nullier, _Triumph_ (painted in 2014) and _Late Lunch_ (Nullier's only work to be painted in 2015), also use Burke as a model. If true, this would make Peter Burke one of Nullier's most frequent portrait subjects. Caffrey has confirmed that one of the two men in _Late Lunch_ is modeled on himself[9]; it has been pointed out that the woman in the image bears some resemblance to Burke's wife, Elizabeth Burke. Nullier scholar Jerome Thompson has suggested that the painting is a statement on duality and the woman is, in fact, a feminized version of Caffrey, with the unidentified man representing Nullier himself, contemplating the masculine and feminine in his work[10]. If this is the case, it remains the only known self-portrait of Jeffrey Nullier.

Thompson has also theorized, regarding the portraits of Burke (and Caffrey, to a lesser extent, who appears again as the semi-nude sculptor in _Midnight_ , painted in 2012), that the mildly homoerotic nature of the images indicates a fascination bordering on obsession on the part of Nullier[11]. In a rare public statement, addressed to the journal which published the article, Nullier rebutted this idea: "To focus on the homoerotic in my paintings creates an imbalance in any critical view of the work. To some extent, all of my subjects contain erotic overtones; part of the frequently uneasy reaction the images cause is the juxtaposition of morbid or grotesque with that of desire. _Consequences_ contains the erotic, but not more so than _Robbing Titian_ or _Blue Study_."[12] It is rumored that a handwritten note addressed directly to Thompson was included with the letter, reading "You're overthinking things, Jerry." [13]

Although Jeffrey Nullier has never been positively identified, Caffrey's occasional coyness on the subject of Nullier's identity suggests that it may be a pseudonym. Neal Caffrey is a convicted felon and is known to have ties to the world of art theft and forgery[citation needed] and it is possible that the painter behind Nullier's work is either a fugitive criminal or wishes to remain out of the public eye for legal reasons.

Caffrey himself has said that Mr. Nullier "is just a private kind of guy. He likes to paint. I don't think he gets what all the fuss is about."[14]

END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Keeping My Hand In](https://archiveofourown.org/works/665033) by [hellseries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellseries/pseuds/hellseries)
  * [Jeffrey Nullier's "Man With Fedora" [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/373565) by [Lunate8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunate8/pseuds/Lunate8)
  * [Cover for "Jeffrey Nullier's "Man With Fedora""](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717265) by [Makoyi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makoyi/pseuds/Makoyi)
  * [Darwin's Proof Table](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2660708) by [danceswchopstck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswchopstck/pseuds/danceswchopstck)




End file.
